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Is it unusual to check how the water runs and how many power outlets are in a potential rental? Like I got told by a potential landlord that I was weirding him out and to leave, I mean there was several problems with the viewing like the original tenants were still there and it was a mess so I

couldn't really do anything. My mentality is to have a pretty thorough inspection of the place cause I could be living there a long time and I want to be comfortable and not have problems.

No. My sister did exactly not that, and the property it turns out didn't have running water. At all. Oh it had faucets. The water just didn't run.

Always check such things imo. Any land lord who gets offended by you wanting to be doubly sure everything is as advertised is probably a land lord you don't want to rent from anyway.

That is not unusual at all, you have to check things.There are landlords out there who will try to get away with all sorts of nonsense.

And like, knowing how many outlets there are is a basic thing to know! A landlord should be telling you that straight up.

Yeah man, 100% check everything out.

If your landlord is getting weird about you doing checks (which is common sense) it probably means they are hiding some long running problems.

Some people have very low standards and landlords love those people because they will never complain or call on them to fix gak. I've rented some absolute hovels in my student days...

Nothing wrong with checking that sort of thing. The landlord's attitude is a pretty big red flag to me though. You're going to have to live in this place and pay a lot of money in the process so it's only reasonable to want to check out everything to do with the place. If a landlord doesn't like you being so thorough there may well be an ulterior motive on their part.

Things like water pressure and electrical outlets can be a problem in older buildings, especially if the owner hasn't upgraded the infrastructure in a long time. With the amount of electrical equipment most people use now the old double socket for your TV is less and less suitable.

I agree with the others, checking the basic services and utilities is perfectly normal and should honestly be part of what they show you upon arrival and certainly something you need to make sure of.

It's not just counting plug sockets and checking the running water, its checking if the hot and cold both work; its checking if there's a meter system; its seeing if the plugs even work. Checking the toilet is a very good thing, not just if its nice to look at but if it flushes and refills; showers to see if they run and check the grouting, ovens, fridges/freezers. If they provide facilities its good to check them.

Any landlord who doesn't like that is sending up big red warning flags. At best they might be new to it and thus not quite confident with someone moving around "their property" etc... They might be ok, but could also be a nightmare because its their first time and they aren't really prepared for what having a lodger entails.
At worst they know something is wrong in the property and don't want you to spot it before paying. It might be nothing to do with the water nor electrics it could be something else entirely, but if you're paying attention to the small details then you're more likely to spot it so they try and hurry you along or make you sound odd to try and stop you poking around.




A note on water, sometimes properties that haven't been lived in for a long while might run coloured water where the water has basically sat in the tank/system/pipes for a long while. So if you get coloured water run the tap for a bit and see if it clears. It's something a letting agent or experienced landlord should know about (and typically aim to run the water the day before etc... to avoid it).

I'll agree with everybody else

check it, check it all

(after all they're no doubt going to want you to sign something saying it's in perfect condition so they can charge you for messing stuff up when you leave, so if it's pre-broken you need to know even if you are ok with renting a place with faults)

and if the landlord doesn't want you to run a mile there is almost certainly something wrong with the place (or just the landlord)

Landlords are parasites extracting useful money from the economy from peoples hard work for doing feck all.

Give them no quarter, expect none. If a landlord dislikes you checking stuff like that it probably means they want a pushover tennant they can push around and ignore their obligations.

Never let them away with that crap.

Always ask for copies of any 'state at start' photos. Always.

It's nice when they get the red flags out right away, up front.

Yes, you should be checking the water pressure, that the toilet flushes, that the outlets work, and a great many other things already mentioned in this thread. There are a few reasons a landlord might not want you doing those things and none of those reasons are in your best interest.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Always ask for copies of any 'state at start' photos. Always.

And take your own.

Indeed. But defo get copies of what was taken at the time. It's far too easy for them to 'confuse' those pics, with ones showing no damage from a past tenant.

I've known people to take photos of the property when they've moved in, all time stamped on the photo (or in the photo properties, but on the photo is normally trusted a bit more so "because you can't change it so easily". Then they take the files and have a legal firm hold them - recording the date etc...

This way they've got two layers of proof of the date when the photos were taken.

Yup. All sensible steps to take.#

When I last moved house, they charged me £40 for a lightbulb.

£40. For a lightbulb.

A lightbulb that only blew because the junkie upstairs flooded his bathroom, and the peeps sorting it failed to things out properly.

£40.

Letting agents in the UK are about the worst I have ever dealt with.

Sadly, I've no point of reference, having solely dealt with UK based Lettings Agents.

While I agree 100% that 'landlords' are moochers, the situation isn't so bad in Canada as it is in the U.K..

Specifically in Ontario, where I now live, tenants have very, very strong protections from predators and I'm advised the situation is much the same from Newfoundland to B.C..

The rental scene in the U.K. is, by comparison, a shark-tank.

In my experience, landlords in Scotland and England have been hit and miss but orders of magnitude better than those in the US and Israel, the only other places I have any experience. Mostly I think that's been down to what people will accept as the baseline for 'habitable' more than anything else, though.

I've never encountered a landlord who was uncomfortable with me checking things out, though. That's gotta be an auto-pass for any would-be tenant, surely?

Sounds like you avoided a crappy landlord. If he didn’t want you checking things, he wasn’t on the level. Tell your buds to avoid him at all costs.

how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.

Tenants can be just as bad. I've had chinese contractors renting my property who had people sleeping on mattresses on the floor in the living room, leaving the kitchen in a tip, stains everywhere, leaving the door wide open during the day.

Not to mention law (in the UK at least) is massively biased towards tenants.

New laws have come in that forbid the upfront charging of more than 5 weeks rent, meaning that tenants can potentially leave without paying the last months rent, and increasing the amount I have to pay to letting agents to cover increased fees.


even donkey-cave tenants who stop paying rent... I know people who have had to foot mortgages and bills for months because someone refuses to leave their property. Now I'd tend to take more direct action but then as I said, the law heavily favours tenants in pretty much all cases.

Regarding the OP, it does seem a little odd. I use a letting agency so I never have any direct contact with tenants, but if i did I'd certainly be trying to show off the house in the best light.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.

Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

Not to mention law (in the UK at least) is massively biased towards tenants.

No it isn't.

One of the big issues is that in the UK a lot of the issues regarding housing and tenants falls under civil law rather than criminal. So whilst there are laws in place for both sides, crafty people (on either side) can cause a nightmare because it all has to go through slow civil court systems and even then it can be hard to get judgements enforced; and because its civil its not really something the police will deal with.

There's loads of stories about scummy and bad landlords just as there are for tenants. I'd even argue it can be worse for landlords in so much as tenants can wind up living in their properties without permission and without paying rents for a long time before they can be evicted which can all come with crippling costs as well - not to mention that you're unlikely to see any money from the tenant.

It works exactly the same way in Ontario - and all of Canada. Until recently (in Ontario) we had the Landlord and Tenant Board; now it all falls under the Social Justice Tribunal of Ontario umbrella. It isn't hard to get judgments enforced, either here or there, though judgments are often slow in forthcoming, you're right.

You could easily solve that problem by throwing money at the court/tribunal system, but ironically people who like to complain about the courts often also don't like to pay taxes for things like courts.

There is no basis to assert that laws in the U.K. favour tenants and plenty to assert that in fact, the system is heavily weighted in favour of parasitic 'landlords', regardless of outlier horror stories trotted out as if they're the norm in a transparent attempt to garner sympathy.

Can't Pay, Won't Pay isn't a documentary, no matter what Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells desperately wants you to believe.

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.

Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.

The state?! Oh dear.. So its better for those totally competent, fiscally responsible, not at all corrupt Westminster dwellers to call the shots in property management than the common man? I respectfully disagree. The last thing we need is the government taking more of our money. I actually make very little profit from my property. I pay most of it back in income tax. I pay for all repairs. And I take all the risk on the actual market value of the property. This is of course offset by the fact that I will in all likelihood have a nice asset at the end of it. But getting rid of private landlordship won't get more people owning properties.. It will mean more people in council houses, draining capital rather than creating it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

Not to mention law (in the UK at least) is massively biased towards tenants.

No it isn't.

Yes it is. This is fun, your turn.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.

Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.

The state?! Oh dear.. So its better for those totally competent, fiscally responsible, not at all corrupt Westminster dwellers to call the shots in property management than the common man? I respectfully disagree. The last thing we need is the government taking more of our money. I actually make very little profit from my property. I pay most of it back in income tax. I pay for all repairs. And I take all the risk on the actual market value of the property. This is of course offset by the fact that I will in all likelihood have a nice asset at the end of it. But getting rid of private landlordship won't get more people owning properties.. It will mean more people in council houses, draining capital rather than creating it.

This is a far, far better thing, for literally everyone involved except private landlords, than renting at market rates. However, we're getting to politics.

Well I wouldn't worry as you'll probably get your wish in our misguided rush to take everything from the layman and give it to the gevernment. People should be celebrating the ability for totally average Joe's like me to get into private ventures, not be hankering to take it away under some weird impression that I get it all handed to me on a plate.

Plenty of people are happy to rent, and I'm sure they'd rather rent from people like me, (I've never increased rent charges in my entire spell of ownership, despite having every right to according to the market value) than the state, who will rape them for every penny they can.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Well I wouldn't worry as you'll probably get your wish in our misguided rush to take everything from the layman and give it to the gevernment. People should be celebrating the ability for totally average Joe's like me to get into private ventures, not be hankering to take it away under some weird impression that I get it all handed to me on a plate.

For what it's worth, we're very lucky and own two homes. We could happily buy multiple properties by mortgaging the ones we have, rent them, and earn more than we do currently. Significantly more. It has absolutely nothing to do with my resenting how easy it is for some people. It's entirely about wanting other people to have secure homes, too.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Plenty of people are happy to rent, and I'm sure they'd rather rent from people like me, (I've never increased rent charges in my entire spell of ownership, despite having every right to according to the market value) than the state, who will rape them for every penny they can.

I'm not sure why you think they state will abuse its tenants. Have you ever had a council house? They don't come at astronomical rents in my experience. They're pennies compared to private rents in every town I'm aware of.

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.

Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.

Yeah, no.

Yes, some landlords are total scumbags. But many more are perfectly decent people who do care about their tenants.

Landlords who rent out to permanent tenants are actually far better for the economy than a landlord who is turning all of their properties into AirBnBs. At least the property is housing for residents which isn't going to inflate the price of housing.

And the tenants are gaining benefits out of the arrangement too. Tenants don't have to bear responsibility for long term maintenance, if the plumbing conks out the landlord has to foot the bill and get it fixed in a timely manner. They didn't have to cough up a large downpayment like the landlord did when they bought the property, nor do they have the long term obligations that come with owning that property. This is of course a thing that can give landlords nightmares too. Tenants can absolutely trash a property and often get away with it. Most tenants of course are decent people, but the chance of getting a bad seed is always a danger.

Landlords are also always going to have to charge their tenants a higher rate than what the mortgage payment is, otherwise they aren't making money. IE: month to month, renting is more expensive than a mortgage all else being equal. So if a renter is able to save up enough for a downpayment, they will eventually be able to buy their own place. Assuming they aren't in subsidized housing and/or have the discipline to actually save up.

Basically, tenants pay more monthly for the convenience of not having to deal with the periodical expenses and hassle of property ownership. Its a fair trade off assuming nobody is a scumbag, and most people aren't.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Landlords who rent out to permanent tenants are actually far better for the economy than a landlord who is turning all of their properties into AirBnBs.

I agree but 'better than terrible' isn't synonymous with 'good'.

At least the property is housing for residents which isn't going to inflate the price of housing.

Yes it does.

And the tenants are gaining benefits out of the arrangement too. Tenants don't have to bear responsibility for long term maintenance, if the plumbing conks out the landlord has to foot the bill and get it fixed in a timely manner. They didn't have to cough up a large downpayment like the landlord did when they bought the property, nor do they have the long term obligations that come with owning that property.

And many (nowadays, in some territories, most) will never manage to save one, precisely because they're giving a landlord so much.

Landlords are also always going to have to charge their tenants a higher rate than what the mortgage payment is, otherwise they aren't making money. IE: month to month, renting is more expensive than a mortgage all else being equal

And? My argument is that there should simply be no private landlords. I'm not quibbling about the rates. Obviously businesses need to make money - housing should not be a business. It is an essential commodity.